The ITU launched its latest statistics report, the World in 2011: ICT Facts and figures, which revealed impressive growth in a number of areas such as global internet use, particularly in developing countries. The report included further key details such as:

• One third of the world's population are forecast to be online by the end of 2011, 45% of whom will be under 25 with developing countries now accounting for some 62% of total global internet users up from 44% in 2006.

• Mobile penetration set to continue its robust growth, with almost 6bn connected via mobiles and a global penetration that stands at an 87%, 79% for developing countries. A total of 159 economies worldwide have launched 3G services commercially and the number of active mobile-broadband subscriptions has increased to almost 1.2 billion. 3G population coverage has reached 45%, compared to 90% of the population that is covered by a 2G mobile cellular network.

• Global disparities still remain. For example, while international Internet bandwidth has grown from 11,000 Gbit/s in 2006, to close to 80,000 Gbit/s in 2011, Europeans enjoy on average almost 90,000 bit/s of bandwidth per user compared to Internet users in Africans who are limited to 2,000 bit/s per user.

• The world's top broadband economies are from Europe and Asia and the Pacific. In the Republic of Korea mobile-broadband penetration today exceeds 90% and almost all fixed-broadband connections provide speeds equal to, or above 10 Mbit/s. In comparison, broadband users in Ghana, Mongolia, Oman and Venezuela are limited to broadband speeds below 2 Mbit/s.

By Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication. Paul is also a contributor of the Paul Budde Communication blog located here.